Category Archives: wild things

Nestled in the woods just north of Frontenac Provincial Park, Wintergreen is a year-round education and retreat centre. Their focus is education, culture, and the environment and they offer courses and retreat and meeting facilities for individuals and groups.

This last weekend we had the pleasure of staying two nights in the main lodge, a wonderful, off-grid straw-bale building with a green roof. The lodge sits in a meadow, immediately surrounded by flowers, herbs and vegetables with the forest beyond.

Wintergreen’s 204 acres features mixed forests and meadows, granite outcroppings, ponds, marshes, and a glacier carved lake – we managed to explore a good part of this during an awesome two-hour wilderness hike.

I watched a beaver slide into a pond and swim across it, my first certain sighting. Less romantically but no less a landmark, I picked my first tick off my clothing as we sat on the dock by the glacial lake. With ticks increasingly present – even in Toronto this summer – and concerns about Lyme Disease, this is something we all need to know about!

I stopped worrying about sticking to ‘the beaten track’ (sometimes we lost the trail for a while) and soaked up the beauty of the woodland, the lake and ponds, the rock, as we explored, occasionally investigating one of the wilderness cabins (including a hobbit house) that dot the property. We did do a thorough tick inspection when we got back to the lodge, though.

Earlier that day, I had joined thirteen other women in ‘Celebrating the Sacredness of Woman’, a workshop led by Julie Vachon a Metis woman who has studied with many elders and has attended ceremonies over the last 18 years. Among other things, we shared a new moon pipe, part of a ceremonial setting of personal intention at Sturgeon Moon, the August new moon. At a moment when my life is literally at the cusp of a major transition, this was moving and profound, as well as joyous.

This was one of those magic times outside time that feels utterly ‘meant’!

(Written early in September but delayed due to lack of time to sort out our photos!)

Ottawa.

Where are all the people? On a Saturday early in August, it seemed so quiet compared with Toronto! We realized how true it is that everyone leaves this city of politicians and bureaucrats at the weekend when we found it thrumming on Monday night.

Diving into Canadian history; the Museum of Civilization is amazing, beautifully put together in a wonderful building designed by First Nations architect Douglas Cardinal, but also overwhelming. We drank deep of the First Peoples’ Hall, wandered across a continent and through hundreds of years of history in the Canada Hall and came ‘Face to Face’ with some key Canadian personalities – I was pleased to find I already knew at least something about many of them. (The Wikipedia article gives a great overview).

Museum of Civilization, OttawaFabulous ceiling at the Museum of Civilization, OttawaZen Garden, Museum of Civilization, Ottawa

Chinese Fireworks over Lac Leamy in Gattineau (the Quebec side of the Ottawa river), were more spectacular even than our expectations of them.

Ottawa - SkunkA day to recover from intellectual indigestion, sandwiching our exploration of the Byward Market (one of Canada’s oldest, fabulous foods, with funky shops including a run of high-end boutiques to the east) between exceptional local food for both brunch and dinner (Navarra and Fraser Cafe) – it was particularly fun at the latter to let the chefs decide what to feed us! Paul risked expulsion from our hotel room – any closer to the skunk he photographed and I would not have wanted him anywhere near me. Strange that, in our capital city, we also got our first sightings of both a groundhog and a beaver.

Parliament Hill, OttawaParliament Hill, OttawaParliament Hill, Ottawa

Mosaika - Parliament Hill, Ottawa (great sound and light show about what it means to be Canadian)It seems as if much of Canada needs to be experienced from the water. Ottawa is no exception – you gain a really good sense of how things fit together (and we still find ourselves awed by the immensity of the rivers). Having absorbed the overview, we headed up the Rideau Locks to Parliament Hill. History and citizenship came together as we toured both the exterior and the interior, visiting the House of Commons and Senate, as well as the library, the Peace Tower and some of the committee rooms. Later that evening, we returned for Mosaika, a fabulous exploration in sound and light of what it means to be Canadian projected against the Parliament buildings.

Of course, this being August, we couldn’t skate the Rideau, definitely on our list of ‘must dos’. So I guess that means we will be back . . .

Something quite magical about Toronto is that it is cut through with ravines, carved when the glaciers melted. It is amazing to wander or cycle along a creek, steep banks to either side, almost without awareness of human habitation; just cool greenness.

Cycling home through Taylor Creek last week, I reached a marshy, open section of the ravine, cattails rimed with the gold of evening. I was stopped in my tracks by the choral konk-a-ree calls and scarlet flashes of the Red-winged Blackbirds. Definitely a foreign language!

As I came into the office this morning, I noticed the twitch of a big, fuzzy shape in the window above the back door . . .

Above the back door in our office at 14 Balsam Ave.Above the back door in our office at 14 Balsam Ave.

(click on the images for a larger version!)

Raccoons look so amazingly cuddly, with their soft fur and big, dark ringed eyes! Actually most people here recognize them as disease ridden pests that chew the roofing shingles (and most everything else), raid unsecured bins, are almost fearless and pose a number of health risks.